


the awful song

by nasaplates



Category: K-pop, SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Walking Dead Fusion, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fake Character Death, Heavy Angst, Infidelity, M/M, Multi, Temporary Character Death, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2020-09-23 18:49:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20344975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasaplates/pseuds/nasaplates
Summary: There’s no reddit anymore, so it’s not like Junhui can go onto r/relationships and be like “I [30M] fucked my husband’s [28M] best friend [29M] because I thought my husband was dead. Surprise, he isn’t. Now what do I do?"





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [figure8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/figure8/gifts).

> Written for SVT Jukebox Hozier round "No Plan"
> 
> This fic has a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/thedeadrobin/playlist/5NA1Am9ZmSeQ15zxTEhjko?si=SF6I7vsHSOeUvYT27K1Gqw) which you should all listen to because len is a genuis.
> 
> some necessary disclaimers before I unleash you on this, PLEASE read:  

> 
>   * this is a The Walking Dead au/fusion but you very much don't need to know anything about The Walking Dead. I don't. I have seen approximately one episode, but spent years TWD-adjacent to the point I know a surprising amount about the first season and a smattering of facts about the rest. essentially I took the concept and a few plot points of the first season and decided to run with it. this fic HAS been vetted by two people who watched twd and were part of twd fandom for a while, so, if you do like twd, I believe it's safe to say I've treated the universe well.
>   * this fic has zombies, and there are many scenes that are bloody, gory, and violent. the characters go through traumatic experiences featuring said zombies. if that's not something you want to read, that's completely understandable.
>   * this fic has infidelity as a MAIN topic. hopefully the summary blurb makes it obvious there are extenuating circumstances, but the guilt and hurt of infidelity are real and present. I'd like to hope that I treat the subject well, and that it's obvious how and why everything is happy in the end, but again, if that's a bad subject for you, please take care of yourself.
>   * minor point but I aged up the characters to pull them a bit closer to twd-verse ages and for a few relevant points to the story and relationships. shouldn't be an issue, but if you're confused about the ages in the summary, that's why.
>   * REMEMBER THE ANGST WITH A HAPPY ENDING TAG.
> 
> len, this would never have happened without you for so many reasons I don't even know where to start, thank you, with all my heart.  
hyb, thanks for letting me make you cry <3  


_ What is a ghost? Something dead that seems to be _

_ alive. Something dead that doesn’t know it’s dead. _

\- Richard Siken

  
  


Junhui has watched more than his fair share of zombie movies. There are a handful of things they never mentioned, and never would, now that it had actually happened.

  1. Animals. It's funny looking back and realizing that animals almost never played a part, unless you had a wild zombie dog, the occasional undead cat. This virus, the real one, the one that actually happened, it only affected humans. After the initial murderous tragic chaos, the human/animal ratio changed dramatically, once pet dogs now ownerless, looking for scraps. Cats wandering the wasteland, meowing for pets. More birds than you've ever heard in your entire life, singing now that the great heave of humanity can't drown them out anymore. Junhui learns quickly to be suspicious of silence, to be afraid when the animals run.
  2. The absolutely fucking moronic shit you're going to grab when you run for your life. Everyone they meet, everyone friendly anyway, everyone they don't have to hide from or threaten or harm, they all have something. One guy came out of the fog with a dildo. A woman passed a formerly ten thousand dollar bottle of wine around the campfire. Junhui remembers emptying his backpack with shaking hands and finding half of his Nintendo Switch. There's a boy with his mother that refuses to let go of a spatula.
  3. How to accept that you left your husband behind in a hospital, lying in a coma. How to live with yourself when you left the love of your life to die.

***

Mingyu had a front row seat for the shooting that landed Minghao in a coma. They’d gotten a tip from a source Minghao refused to divulge, even to him, about a shipment of drugs coming in from China. According to his source, there was something else in the shipping container, something worse than drugs. He wouldn’t say more, but Minghao trusted him, and where Minghao went, Mingyu went.

Everything seemed quiet, at first. No fuss getting into the dockyard, no crew waiting for them. It seemed like no one would even stop them from opening the crate. But the second Mingyu lifted the bolt cutters to cut the lock, all hell broke loose.

Bullets pinged off the metal in a halo around Mingyu’s head, ricochets whizzing by his ear, embedding in his bulletproof vest, a graze tearing through the skin of his bicep. Minghao at his back firing, shouting at him to get around the shipping container to cover, with backup coming screaming up, sirens blaring. Mingyu pulled his gun and turned to cover Minghao when a bullet slipped just under the lower left of Minghao’s bulletproof vest and came back out the other side in a spray of blood and gore. Mingyu’s entire world slowed to Minghao, folding backwards, knocked off his feet in a senseless curve.

An ambulance was already there waiting. The doctors said later that that, and the way Mingyu’s hands were pressing to the twin wounds almost before the blood started pumping out of them, was the only thing that saved his life.

Seungcheol, their superior, who came in with the backup, drove him to the hospital, sirens on, tailing the ambulance like they could keep Minghao in this world by proximity, by will, by the screaming of the siren wailing  _ “We’re here, we’re here, we’re here.” _ Mingyu’s hands were too slick with blood to unlock his phone and dial Junhui’s number. He wiped them thoughtlessly on Seungcheol’s upholstery, and the man didn’t even tut in response. All Mingyu could think about was Junhui, how he had to call him, had to tell him. He was Minghao’s next of kin, but no paperwork in Korea would ever show him by his rightful title: Husband. No hospital would let him into the emergency room, next to his bed where he belonged. Only Mingyu’s badge could do that, now.

“Mingyu?” Junhui’s voice called, after Mingyu’s third slippery and shaking attempt. His voice was afraid. Mingyu didn’t question how he knew this call was something to be afraid of.

The sirens cut off as they got to the hospital. Mingyu couldn’t speak.

“Oh god, oh Jesus Christ,” Junhui cut off the call.

When Junhui bursts into the hospital and sees the blood covering Mingyu’s body, his knees quake, but he stays upright, eyes locked on Mingyu’s.

When they wait in the horrible little room with the horrible little chairs to find out if Minghao would live or die, Junhui’s hands hold each other, white knuckled. Mingyu imagines those hands instead of his own in the horrible little bathroom where he washes Minghao’s blood out from under his fingernails.

When the doctor comes out hours later and tells them  _ He’s stable _ and tells them  _ We had to induce a coma _ and tells them  _ We’ll know more, if he makes it through the night _ Junhui grips Mingyu’s bicep. He doesn’t know his flesh has been torn open, that Mingyu can feel the blood seeping out again. Mingyu doesn’t flinch. Junhui can have all the blood he needs.

Mingyu thought that would be the worst day of his life.

***

A week after the surgery, a doctor tells Minghao’s parents that Minghao is ready to be taken out of the induced coma, healed enough to wake up without danger. Junhui isn’t allowed in the room, even though Minghao’s mother wants him there. Mingyu is at work, and Junhui’s pride can’t take calling him and asking him to bully the nurses.

Minghao’s parents have to come out to the waiting room to tell him that he didn’t wake up the way the doctors thought he would, that he’d stayed in the coma instead, this time with nothing they can do to help. Junhui throws up in the little single stall bathroom and washes his face so Minghao’s mother doesn’t know he’s been crying. She knows anyway, that’s mothers for you, and Minghao’s father carefully looks away. She holds Junhui’s hand while they stare out the window waiting for everything to make sense again. Minghao’s father yells at a doctor until they put Junhui’s name on the list of people with visiting rights.

When Mingyu arrives at the hospital after his shift, he’s taken the time to buy a bouquet of little yellow roses from Minghao’s favorite flower shop, but hadn’t bothered to change out of his uniform. 

He curls up so small in the seat next to Minghao’s bed he looks like a boy, lost and afraid, clutching yellow roses like he could use them as a weapon against God.

A week passes and Junhui doesn’t sleep anywhere but the chair in Minghao’s room. He watches shitty TV and ignores the news and narrates the internal dialogue of the characters on the terrible soap operas in exactly the way Minghao has always hated. It takes him a few days to realize he’s halfway hoping he’ll irritate him so much his hand will lift up off the sheets and take the TV controller away from him.

Junhui comes halfway awake one day, sunlight streaming in the room. There’s a blanket tossed over him. Minghao hasn’t moved.

“I’ll take care of him, Haohao,” Mingyu’s voice murmurs. He’s holding Minghao’s lifeless hand between his two palms, like a prayer, and an offering. Junhui has a vision of magic and witches, of someone chanting a spell and drinking a potion and clutching their dead lover’s hand until their life force flows in pale lavender smoke through their fingers. A pact, soul to soul.

“I promise. No matter what happens, I’ll keep him safe.”

***

Mingyu's hands fumble the key in Minghao and Junhui's door. He's had a key since they moved into the new place, given to him on a little ribbon as soon as he put down the last box and wiped the sweat from his forehead. If Mingyu had time to wonder, he might wonder if he'd ever see Minghao's gentle smile again.

The key slides home and he pushes in.

"What the-" Junhui yelps, and then sighs. "I was just-"

Mingyu interrupts, grabbing a handful of things as he goes. "Pack a bag, Junhui."

Canned goods, lighters, twine and duct tape from the junk drawer, into Mingyu's police standard tactical rucksack with the baton, taser, shotgun, and all the ammunition Minghao had stashed away in his desk out of some kind of compulsive paranoia. Mingyu finds five little bears of honey at the back of the pantry and swears in gratitude. Sustenance  _ and _ medicine.

A hand grabs his shoulder. "Mingyu, you're scaring me,"

"Good," Mingyu says, tossing off his hand. "Pack a fucking bag,  _ now." _

Mingyu strides into the master bedroom, Junhui squawking behind him. He takes a blue painting off the wall, one of Minghao's from back in college when he was still an art major, presses a knot in the wood panelling making it pop open revealing a safe.

"What the  _ fuck," _ Junhui murmurs as Mingyu deftly taps in the combination. Minghao's mother's birthday and the day he and Junhui met.

The safe has two handguns, more ammunition, jewelry that Mingyu hovers a hand over and ignores along with paperwork like birth certificates and other legal documents. 

_ "Mingyu," _ Junhui yells, and Mingyu finally looks at him. His eyes are dark and exhausted and terrified.

"Turn on the TV, Jun, any channel," he says, and starts stuffing clothes from Junhui's side of the closet into a backpack stashed on a shelf. Mingyu pushes past Junhui into the master bathroom and dumps the entire contents of the medicine cabinet into the backpack.

_ These scenes witnessed in San Francisco are the last communication from the United States. This video of chaos and what appears to be the breakout of some kind of disease, was downloaded before Facebook's servers crashed and the site, and the nation, went dark. These are sensitive, but important, images, view with caution _ .

Mingyu tries to tune out the screaming and the sounds of animal grunts and tearing flesh, but the hair along his arms stands on end, a chill runs down his spine.

"Fuck," Junhui swears vehemently. "Mingyu?"

He turns to look at him, TV controller in one hand, half of his Switch in the other like he'd picked it up to put it away and then forgotten he was holding it.

"It's here, Jun. I saw…" Images flash before his eyes of the old woman they found in the back of the shipping container trapped in a cell, flesh rotting off her bones, snarling teeth stained with blood. "It's here."

_ "Oh my god," _ the newscaster says.

"Fuck," Junhui swears. He snatches the backpack out of Mingyu's hand, stuffs the Switch controller into it for no apparent reason. "Boots," he says, voice shaking. "I need my fucking boots."

***

They start off in the car, siren blaring, thinking maybe it’s early enough, maybe people won’t have seen the news yet, maybe it won’t have spread too far. Junhui loads the gun Mingyu hands him just like Minghao taught him to, finger off the trigger, thumb on the safety, pointed somewhere neutral. The air is thick in the car, like dread became toffee, sickly sweet, sticky on their teeth.

Mingyu drives west. It’s the wrong way.

“Mingyu,” Junhui says, “the hospital, it’s -” he points backwards, heart pounding. Mingyu’s hands tighten on the steering wheel.

“We can’t.” The only sound is the tires on the road, the engine revving up and down, the beeps of horns from cars that feel so far away they might as well be in another universe.

“What do you mean we can’t, Mingyu,” Junhui’s voice is shaking. “It’s Ming _ ha _ -”

“I fucking  _ know, _ alright!” Mingyu pulls himself forward like he’s curling to hide his belly from attack, falls back against the seat like he got punched anyway. “We  _ can’t, _ Jun, that’s where it fucking started.” There are tears buried in his voice but his eyes are wide and dry. “They came out of the morgue. He’s gone. We can’t go back.”

Junhui’s ears ring.  _ He’s gone. _ On repeat like a sick and twisted ringtone, ringing, ringing ringing. If he knew where the phone was he would answer it. He’s never wanted to hear Minghao’s voice more.

He’s halfway lifted the gun to point it at Mingyu’s head. He’s halfway to telling him to turn the fucking car around when Mingyu slams on the brakes.

“Fuck,” Mingyu says, slams the car in reverse before Junhui can see what it was he stopped for. Slams the brakes again when he realizes there’s nowhere backwards to go.

A flood of screaming people are pouring down the street in the distance. The screaming is audible now, even over the police siren still wailing over their head. Junhui twists to look behind them and sees another river of humanity, people leaving their cars behind, people falling and not getting up.

“Get out,” Mingyu says, serious and terrified. Junhui can only look at him.  _ “Get the fuck out, Jun, and run.” _

The memories after that are fractured, hectic cutscenes, crashing sound, echoing silence, horror and gore and pain.

Falling to the pavement tripping out of the car and scrambling on all fours until he’s on his feet, Mingyu’s hand tight on his bicep.

A woman grabbing his ankle as she falls, still human but eyes already turning red, blood pooling in her mouth. Junhui kicks her in the face.

Mingyu picking up a blood soaked baseball bat and smashing it into the face of a man with flesh in his teeth, hungry hands greedy for more, until he’s still. Until he’s dead again.

Firing the gun. Firing the gun. Firing the gun. 

Finally they reach the mountains, finally the trees loom higher than the buildings. They peel off of the street, scramble up a deer trail, scraped knees, bloody palms, lungs and legs and minds on fire. They run until it’s silent. They run until they startle a deer.

No one follows them. 

Junhui will spend years asking the question:  _ Why didn’t anyone follow us? _

_ Why did they stay on the pavement and die? _

***

That first night is dark and terrible. They walk until it isn't safe to anymore, and then they walk until they find a trio of boulders that make for shelter. By silent agreement, they don't chance a fire, shivering with shoulders pressed together under the emergency blanket. Neither of them sleep. The moon lights shadows that have Mingyu twitching, a variety of animals making careful progress through the night, startling him, startling each other. An owl hoots from a nearby tree and Mingyu feels like the muscles of his upper back are going to turn to stone with the way he cannot make them relax.

Sometime when the sky is just starting to blush, the adrenaline and fatigue and trauma catch up to Mingyu. He hears Minghao like he's speaking in his ear. Wine drunk, earnest, 10 years ago when they were young and stupid.

_ "Bukansan. If you can't get out of the city, and it's, y'know, apocalypse shit. And we're in different classes or whatever, or you're visiting your grandma. Bukansan. Off the west entrance trail, that river, meet me there." _

The plan is stupid. It was always stupid. Mingyu argued with him at length about how fucking stupid it was until they started laughing so hard they cried for reasons neither of them could explain the next day. But when it happened, when it was him and Junhui against an honest to God zombie hoard, he went north, and west, and up into the mountains.

_ Maybe Minghao will be waiting for us there, _ Mingyu thinks. It's stupid. A frog croaks in agreement.

They pack up as soon as it's light enough, inasmuch as folding a blanket and stretching stiff limbs counts as "packing up." Mingyu desperately wants to brush his teeth but Junhui starts walking and doesn't look back.

Junhui doesn't need his protection, not really, no matter what Mingyu promised Minghao in that hospital room. He's a Wushu champion, and maybe he worked at a cat cafe but he could still kick Mingyu's ass with his eyes closed any time he wants. But Mingyu still quick steps until he's in front of him, striding broad and tall, handgun in one hand, bat in the other. He wants to be an avenging angel. He wants to be what Junhui needs.

Breakfast is half of a protein bar, lunch is the other half. It shouldn't have taken them so long to get to the place Mingyu remembers, but they have to find their way back to the trail, and the bushes and trees are thick.

"Where are we going?" Junhui asks, mouth full of blueberry vanilla granola bar. 

"It's not far," is all he says. Junhui nods and folds the plastic wrapper into smaller and smaller squares, tucks it into the front pocket of his jeans. Mingyu stuffs his wrapper into his duffle and wipes his hands on his shirt. It makes Junhui roll his eyes and smile, just a little.

"Come on, blue bird," Mingyu says, "just a little further."

They get there at sunset, the trees on fire with the light, the river burbling as it makes its way along the high rocks to one side, and a wide open space to the other. There's a neat row of tents set up, and a little wooden cabin in the back that Mingyu didn't remember being there the last time he made this hike.

"Who the fuck are you?" Comes a cold voice to his left. He glances at Junhui, who nods, and they turn slowly, hands half raised. 

There's a boy, teenager, holding a stick in a fighting stance, fine boned face stone-like with fiery eyes.

"Renjun…?" Junhui gasps. The boy's gaze slides to Junhui and his face softens and rounds.

"Moon Junhui? Oh my god, oh my  _ god." _

He drops the stick and pushes past Mingyu's shoulder to bury himself in Junhui's chest. They murmur to each other in low, rapidfire Mandarin, Junhui's head tipped down like he could curl himself around the other boy, envelop him completely. 

They pull apart eventually, something loosened in Junhui's back, something young in Renjun's face. A chorus of calls come from the tents, a handful of boys and young men coming out to see what the fuss is about, a handful of others, stragglers, scratches and bruises marking them and their escape from the city.

Mingyu and Junhui look at each other, dying sunlight shining golden on Junhui's cheeks, sparkling off his hair. 

Renjun takes Junhui's hand, tugs him through the outdoor adventure camp they've tried to make into a home. He looks between them when he says they can have a tent, one cot, sorry. Junhui clenches his jaw but cracks a glittering smile, makes a joke about not stealing the covers.

Renjun laughs and leaves them to rest. Mingyu breathes and sets down his bag.

They're safe. For now, they're safe.

***

Junhui doesn't sleep. When he sleeps he doesn't dream, he remembers.

Sunlight drenched the white billowing curtains, seagulls cawed out the day, waves crashed on the shore. Minghao woke him up with kisses. Junhui always woke up at the first press of lips but pretended not to, laying still and breathing even, while his lover's lips pressed to his forehead, eyelids, nose, cheek. Junhui couldn't help parting his lips in anticipation. He could feel Minghao's smile when he skipped his mouth and dipped to his chin instead, and then lower.

Lower, lower. Junhui gave up the pretence and accommodated him, arching his back to follow his lips, his trailing fingers.

_ "I love you," _ Minghao said, right before - 

Junhui wakes up before Minghao swallows his cock like it's a holy communion. Mingyu's puffs of sleeping breath on the back of his neck sound nothing like Minghao's. The tent walls rustle gently in the wind.

Junhui rises in the dark, no way to know the time anymore. In the dark he tucks the blanket around Mingyu's back and walks to the river. In the dark he's alone with his loss.

***

Mingyu starts losing track of the days quicker than he expected. It's approximate now, approximate times, approximate days. It doesn't matter if it's Sunday, does it, when there's no job to take a break from, no church to attend.

There's so much sorrow it sometimes feels like they're all going to drown in it, dry drowning, in reach of land. But there's a surprising amount of normalcy, too.

Mingyu finds out that Renjun and his friends were part of an elite dance troupe, that he and Junhui had met years back when they trained for the same company. They were there on a bonding retreat with an adventure company to destress after a grueling competition schedule. They call each other Dreamies like it's a family name.

The boys (he shouldn't call them that, they're at least 19, all of them, more alcohol stashed in their tents than Mingyu's seen at most convenience stores) start a betting pool for whose phone will die last, a pile of candy bars on the line. The cell towers are all down, internet non-existent now, Mingyu supposes, so they can't use them for more than looking at pictures, listening to music they downloaded before it all went dark. They've got a gas powered generator in the cabin they're using for supplies, but with gas such a precious commodity they haven't bothered to use it, wouldn't waste it on recharging their cells. The first time a yell of anguish over a dead battery tears through the camp, Mingyu and Junhui both set off running, Mingyu with a bat, Junhui with a knife, pulling up short at the laughter that follows. They laugh too, but it takes an hour at least for Mingyu's heart to calm down.

Junhui's phone dies in the middle of watching a cat video he'd downloaded off YouTube, the Dreamies crowded around him, Mark crowing in victory when the screen goes dark just as the cat is about to go skidding off the table again. Junhui hams up his disappointment to wring another laugh out of everyone. They make eye contact across the camp. Mingyu wonders how he's the only one that sees him as he is; eyes red-rimmed and shattered.

Mingyu, Junhui, and an old military vet take turns keeping watch at night, sitting at a small scout fire with an air horn and Mingyu's shotgun across their laps. The old woman is ill, coughing up blood and spitting it onto the ground, but she shoots better than anyone else there, and just tells Mingyu to get his beauty sleep when he offers to take her watch.

One night on Mingyu's watch a small, dirty dog wanders up to the fire and sits down next to him, leaning against his leg. He's a yorkie poo, little red collar with "Joseph" on the name tag. 

"Hi there, Jo Jo," Mingyu whispers to the dog, scritching the fur behind his ears. "Sleep, pup. You've earned it."

The Dreamies adopt the dog, washing him in the river (which looked a lot more like splashing each other while the dog barked in delight) and making sure he never went a single second without being petted. Jo Jo still comes to Mingyu and keeps watch with him, leaning against his leg.

Two weeks pass, roughly, as far as anyone knows since all the phones are dead now and none of them bothered to keep a tally anywhere. They're all sitting around the campfire, eating the heated up cans of various foods, when a woman who'd somehow managed to make it there with her high heeled shoes still on and unbroken, brought out a bottle of wine.

They all pass the bottle around, and then another, and then some beers. Hand to hand and mouth to mouth the alcohol goes, and their stories too, both a balm, both a way to let go. Losses, loves, ghosts that haunt them, exposed to the fire, released to the smoke. No one comments on the tears shed. No one has a dry face to cast a stone with.

"I lost my best friend," Mingyu says. He doesn't speak about his grandmother, or his parents in another city. He wept for them when his nightly watch was over, when Junhui rose from broken sleep and only the sheets would see his tears. But this he shares. Minghao needs to be spoken.

Junhui stands abruptly, taking his beer with him. His steps echo through the silence that follows his departure. Mingyu follows him with his eyes. The old woman pats Mingyu's knee and spits blood into the flames.

Pulled like a magnet, like a compass, Mingyu rises and retraces Junhui's steps, following the moonlit breadth of his shoulders. There's a pillow over his thoughts, something screaming underneath. Leaves rustle under his feet until he's standing in front of Junhui. He thinks he's answering a question. He thinks maybe he's asking one, too. 

Junhui is angry, vibrating with it, literal tremors wracking his frame. He's never looked more beautiful.

***

Junhui, sad and drunk and alone at the end of the motherfucking world, finally takes what Mingyu's offering, what he's been offering for so much longer than Junhui thinks either of them knew (any of them, there were three, once, there were two, there was). It's brutal and ugly and profoundly  _ unclean. _ The way their teeth clash together hurts, but he can still think, can still  _ feel, _ so Junhui keeps licking into Mingyu's mouth like he'll find something hidden under his tongue. Like Minghao's there, somewhere, under the too broad shoulders, the wrong tasting spit. 

Mingyu tries to soften the blow when Junhui's body crashes into his, hands almost gentle on his hips, lips pliant against the onslaught. Junhui bites until he tastes blood and then he keeps on going, one way blood pact, Mingyu swallowed down into his belly and all he gets in return is a wound.

_ Maybe you'll hurt like I hurt, _ he thinks.  _ Maybe I won't have to carry it alone. _ He says it with his hands in Mingyu's hair, with the nails against his scalp, with the brutal unyielding jut of his cock pressed to Mingyu's hip.

Mingyu gasps like a land bound fish when Junhui bites a mark on his jaw. Glass thuds and Junhui realizes Mingyu hadn't even let his bottle go, not until then, not until a bruise started blossoming on his face.

"I'm here," Mingyu pants.

_ 'Fuck you,'  _ Junhui thinks.

"Fuck me," Junhui says.

Their clothes stay on. They don't bother to even fuck on the ground in the spread of soft autumn leaves. Junhui marches them blindly until Mingyu's back slams into a tree, and tears at the buckle on Mingyu's belt like an animal. The sounds they make when Mingyu finally gets both their dicks held in one dry, wide palm are animal too. 

Fighting to the death and fucking for survival are often difficult to distinguish.

It's dry and terrible and unsatisfying and it's the only fucking thing that's felt real since time stopped mattering. Junhui wails in anguish and then sets his teeth on Mingyu's neck when he comes, like it was either that or tear Mingyu's carotid and wear the blood spray like a mask. Mingyu claws at Junhui's nape and comes so silently Junhui thinks he can hear both of their hearts pounding in sick and twisted harmony,  _ I'm here / I'm here, Fuck you / Fuck me. _

Even hours later, after the muted silence, after the hormones are washed down the river by oil slick shame, side by side on their single cot with regret like a plexiglass wall between their wrong-way-parentheses backs, Junhui touches his neck and feels the crescent moons indented there.

Dawn lights his tear streaked face. Junhui falls asleep.

***

On the other side of Seoul, dawn lights the dust motes floating in a silent hospital room, golden and calm. 

Xu Minghao wakes up.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome back! make sure your seatbelts are securely fastened, and you've got tissues handy <3

_ It’s time to choose sides now. _

_ The stitches or the devouring mouth. _

\- Richard Siken

  


The bed is empty when Mingyu opens his eyes. His back is cold, the sheets pushed down when Junhui got up in the night, leaving Mingyu’s sleeping form exposed to the air. He probes the bite on his lip with his tongue, tender and swollen. The mark on his jaw has its own pulse.

Mingyu isn't stupid enough to expect warm smiles and morning kisses, holding hands while they patrol the camp. But Junhui's dead eyes and shark grin, like showing all his teeth will keep the feelings at bay, drops a stone into the frothing sea of acid in Mingyu's belly. Someone teases Junhui for a hickey on his neck that Mingyu doesn't even remember leaving there.

"Gotta scratch that itch, amirite?" Exaggerated eyebrow wag, exaggerated wink. The image is blown by his hunched shoulders and how he knocks back the dregs of a bottle of whiskey, left over from the night before. He salutes with the bottle, strides off, picking up an axe for firewood as he goes.

Mingyu knows what he wants. He's not a patient person, not really a good man. But Junhui is a hurricane, and the feeling in Mingyu's chest an earthquake, tectonic plates permanently shifted, roads to nowhere, rivers changing course. There's no going back, no matter how much Junhui spins.

***

Junhui tips the bottle back and savors the burn of the liquor as it goes down. These boys had terrible taste in alcohol, who the fuck brought peppermint schnapps to a camping trip? But, he supposes, it doesn't do to be picky when he wants to get shitfaced and that bottle of Malbec they'd been saving for their 5th "wedding" anniversary slipped his mind when he was running for his life.

Mingyu is the only one left around the campfire with him. Junhui didn't notice when the rest left. There's three seats between them, a third of the circle, like two useless legs of a tripod about to fall into the flames, or back into the darkness.

Standing up and stretching, Mingyu walks over to him, closing the gap. He stands there, hip at the level of Junhui's face, hand twitching like he wants to do something with it. Junhui takes another swig to fill the ache in his jaw.

"Come on, blue bird," Mingyu says, "put the bottle down and come to bed."

Junhui isn't drunk, but he's far enough to it that his mouth does whatever it wants. Strings cut, puppet on the loose with a knife.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you," he sneers. "Me coming to bed with you, happy fucking families out here at the end of the world." Junhui looks up at him, hiding nothing on his face, letting all the masks fall. Mingyu grimaces, but doesn't flinch. "How long have you wanted to fuck your best friend's husband? Or was I just the only dick that'd have you now that all your fuck buddies are either dead or worse?"

Mingyu's hand clenches into a fist. Junhui wants him to punch him so badly he can taste it. He knows he's an angry teenager in a grown man's body but he can't help it. It's either that or drown in grief too deep to fathom. Walk back into the city and let the virus devour him whole.

Mingyu sits with a too-hard thud, like he let himself fall rather than deciding to make all the deliberate muscle choices to get him to the ground. He uncurls his fist, wraps it around the body of the bottle dangling from Junhui's fingers. There's no resistance when he pulls on it and takes a swig of his own. Junhui doesn't pretend not to watch the way his throat bobs, doesn't pretend not to want to feel the stubble on his face rasp against his own. He's so fucking tired.

"Why do you call me that?" Junhui asks after Mingyu's made a face at the taste of the alcohol and not-so-discreetly put the bottle on the other side of himself, away from Junhui.

"Blue bird?" Mingyu says, confirmation out of politeness, not question. They understand each other better than they pretend to. Mingyu turns away from the flames, looks at Junhui, eyes lips eyes again and holds. "Because you're so pretty. And the only way I could ever have you was to watch through binoculars, at a distance, waiting for you to come to my window and let me listen to you sing."

It's unusually poetic, for Mingyu. Or maybe just for Detective Kim. Maybe this is the Mingyu from those pictures from Minghao's college days, a glass of red wine in his hand while Minghao painted, lingering longing only Minghao's husband would recognize in the way Minghao looked at Mingyu, when Mingyu was looking away.

Junhui swallows.

"And always," Mingyu says, making Junhui frown lightly in confusion. "I've always wanted to fuck my best friend's husband." Mingyu can't maintain eye contact, looks down at his hands instead. 

Junhui thinks about those hands, about how long he's pictured them twisted in his sheets. Even when he was deliriously happy with Minghao, given a love he didn't think he would ever have in his life, he still came sometimes, imagining Mingyu's pout wrapped around his cock.

"Me, too," he says, barely louder than the crackle of flames. He's watching when Mingyu closes his eyes.

They keep all the watches that night. Junhui slowly sobers, the itch for the bottle not enough to move. When Mingyu threads his fingers through Junhui's, wedding ring nestled in the wrong hand, Junhui lets him.

***

There's blood on Minghao's hands. Some of it's his own, knuckles raw, leg bleeding from a gash as he squeezed his too-thin form through a chain link fence. Some of it is from the man he tried to save, before he tried to eat him.

The city was too quiet when he woke up. He didn't remember much from the shooting, the coma. Odd dreams in which he floated above the city like a ghost. 

Once he saw Mingyu fighting something, he couldn't tell what, tunnel vision on Mingyu's blood and dirt streaked face, a creature running for his exposed back. Minghao screamed without words, without sound. Mingyu dropped and spun and buried a knife into the eye of an attacker he had no way to know was there.

Memories of the beach house he and Junhui had rented for their honeymoon, over and over and over kissing Junhui awake.

Mostly it was like sleeping. Until he woke to a silent hospital, IV still in the back of his hand connected to a dry and dusty saline bag, heart monitor on his finger dark and eerie. He got dressed in the neatly folded jeans and threadbare Kermit the frog t-shirt, left there like he was only taking a nap. 

It didn't take him long to figure out something was very very wrong.

Minghao cautiously wandered the ward, looking for any signs of life. The hall was a wreck of empty gurneys, supplies and papers and assorted detritus littering the floor. There were smears on the wall, like bloody hands had left a trail on the plaster. He picked up a scalpel from a tray in an abandoned room, pocketed a drawer full of medications and gauze and anything else he could carry. He took a privacy curtain off it’s rail and quickly cut and tied it into a makeshift crossbody bag, filled it with more supplies, needles and saline, took leftover strips of the curtain and wrapped them around little glass vials with names he couldn’t pronounce. He’d return them all if he was wrong, if there was some explanation for the silence and the disaster and the blood. But he didn’t think he was wrong.

The first zombie he saw came tearing around the corner the second he stepped back into the hallway, crazed and snarling. There were so many gaping wounds in its flesh it was obvious what it was, the impossibility of it not even making Minghao pause. The stench of death and rot permeated the air.

Minghao threw the scalpel and it buried itself in the zombie’s heart. The mistake registered even before the scalpel carried through the dead flesh, and Minghao was running, not bothering to watch the zombie not even stutter in it’s pursuit. 

He killed that one with an IV stand, smashing it until it’s head was nothing more than pulp, gore splattering everywhere, skull fragments in his hair.

He killed the next three in the hospital by tricking them into throwing themselves out of a three story window. It was easier, once he knew what he was dealing with, once he was certain they were stupid. They were a vicious and terrible problem to solve. Minghao knew how to do that.

Progress through the city was slow, careful, deliberate. Brutal, when it had to be, but Minghao avoided that when he could. He watched, and he crouched in hidden places for long long minutes before moving, predator and prey. There were signs of survivors, warnings painted on locked and chained doors, clearly ransacked department stores, bodies on the streets with their heads separated from their torsos with deliberate efficiency. Minghao took a school backpack off the body of a teen, took the pocket knife from another and clipped it onto his jeans pocket. He slipped into a corner store and filled the bag with any nonperishables he could find. Guessed by the bread mold that he’d been lying in that hospital bed for two weeks after...after.

Minghao wondered if he was left alone because the zombies thought he was one of them. Dead, and then alive again. Gone and then pulled back for reasons unknown, hungry. 

The hardest thing, the only time his heart wavered from the cold survivor he had to be, was when he had to decide between heading for home, and heading for the mountains at the edge of the city. If it weren’t for the silence and the bodies and the cars crashed haphazard through the street, he could almost believe Junhui would be waiting for him, munching on some ridiculous snack because he got too hungry to wait for Minghao to come home, maybe with Mingyu flopped on the couch pouting at his phone. He could almost believe he could stop off at his parents’ and dance with his mother in her cramped little kitchen.

Minghao shook his head and cleared it of the dream. No, there wouldn’t be anything waiting for him there that he would want to see. His only chance was the irrepressible instinct that Junhui was alive, and that he was in the mountains. 

One of the grotesque undead had spotted him, as he stood like a buffoon on the sidewalk. He lost a glass jar of peaches to the scuffle, gained the gash on his leg.

It’s night when he finally makes it to Bukansan, the waning moon too dim to risk travel through the dark. Minghao takes shelter in the tiny information cabin by the entrance, covers himself with the bloodstained coat he pulled off a dead man the night before. 

There is blood on his hands. Minghao takes off his wedding ring and polishes it on the first bit of clean fabric he can find, a Bukansan t-shirt, still hanging on its hook. He rubs and rubs in small meditative circles and he sends the circling thought to the moon and the stars and the raven that’s cawing outside the broken window: 

_ I will find you, Junhui. I’m coming, baby. I’m coming. _

***

Mingyu kisses Junhui, on their too small cot, in the liminal space between ‘late’ and ‘early,’ when even the night creatures are silent and still. They were both awake, watching each other, Junhui’s hands curled in front of his chest like he was holding onto them, like twin birds he didn’t want to fly away. Mingyu crosses the border between pillows, between bodies, lips like a peace treaty, or an offering to an angry god.

He is gentle, small sips, little tugs. Lips speaking a soft language, tongue a light accent, the 'n' in _ Junhui, _ in _ Mingyu, _ in _ Minghao. _

It isn't a thing he does to get something in return, with expectation. He has a hard cock, and grief that future archaeologists will find etched into his bones, and demons he wants to exorcise. But that isn't why he kisses Junhui. Mingyu kisses him because Junhui should always be kissed, like this, tender, and simple, and true.

Mingyu kisses him the same way he used to testify in court: yes, Your Honor, no, Your Honor, I love him, Your Honor, guilty as charged.

***

Minghao never kissed Junhui like this. Junhui hates the thought, hates that he can't help thinking about what he no longer has, what he will never have again.

Junhui almost puts a hand on Mingyu's chest, almost says _ no, _ almost says _ stop. _ Minghao wouldn't have needed him to. He'd have sensed it somehow, pulled away and rubbed his hands up and down his back, asked him _ What's wrong? _ He'd have said it in Mandarin, like Junhui was too fragile for Korean.

Mingyu doesn't stop.

Junhui slips his tongue into Mingyu's mouth like petals unfurling in the sun.

It's all like that, devastating in its tenderness. Junhui takes the kiss between his palms and tips Mingyu onto his back like lovers do. Like lovers did, Hollywood swell of strings before the sheet covered lovemaking, before the fade to black.

There is no fade to black.

Eons rise and fall while they trade secrets with their tongues, lips pressing benediction onto sins before the next touch, and the next. Mingyu slides Junhui's shirt up his back with the same reverence an art collector uses to uncover a statue. They come apart so Junhui can pull the shirt over his head and he gasps at the ceiling when Mingyu's thumbs stroke over his peaked nipples. Mingyu sits up just long enough to pull his own shirt over his head, then pulls Junhui back down by the mouth.

Their hips rock slow, boxer-clad cocks sliding hot and aching. Junhui watches Mingyu's eyelashes flutter, sees the moan form in his throat before Junhui takes it into his own lungs by the lips.

"Want to see you," Junhui whispers, sliding off Mingyu's hips to the side, hand low on Mingyu's belly. Mingyu hooks his thumbs into his boxers and lifts his hips, slides them over his cock and down, kicking them off the rest of the way, completely unselfconscious. His cock rises hard and proud from between his legs, and Mingyu just watches Junhui, waiting. Junhui takes him in his hand and just feels the weight of him, the hot hard _ life _ of him.

Junhui tugs off his own boxers, no show, no ceremony, retakes his place straddling Mingyu's hips. Mingyu looks at him like Junhui imagines any of them would look at a working McDonald's right now. It makes Junhui smile. It makes Junhui want to swallow him whole.

Mingyu's hands on his thighs, he says, "Wait," and tips sideways, torso twisted to reach into his knapsack. The motion makes Mingyu's cock twitch, so Junhui strokes it idly, light touches, not quite teasing, enough to make Mingyu groan. 

When he twists back he's holding a bottle of lube, and Junhui's mouth waters.

"Yes," Junhui says. He takes the bottle from Mingyu, and squeezes a precious dollop onto his fingers. Mingyu lifts his knees, starts to go on his elbows, but Junhui has something else in mind.

The first touch is always cold, oddly clinical, even when he's doing this to himself. The ring of muscle clenches against his own invasion. Junhui uses the pad of his middle finger to coax himself into relaxing. It's Mingyu that moans.

Junhui holds Mingyu's eyes hostage when he presses the first finger in, his own eyelashes fluttering at the unmistakable reality of the action. Mingyu's hands on his thighs flex in unconscious time with the working of Junhui's hand.

Another finger, and another. He takes his time, because it's been over a month since he did this last, and because the last thing he wants is to explain to the ex-nurse in camp how he hurt himself if he doesn't stretch properly. Junhui doesn't touch Mingyu but Mingyu is panting like he's the one being fingered, hips lifting in small helpless thrusts off the cot.

Finally Junhui removes his fingers, wipes them on the sheet, squeezes another dollop of lube onto his palm. He leans forward to kiss Mingyu's panting mouth when he strokes him, two long slow strokes, thumb swirling the head just to feel the way he whines into his mouth.

Junhui sits up again, one hand splayed on Mingyu's chest, and lines him up. Sinking down is a stretch and a burn and a revelation. The revelation is in the way Mingyu watches himself disappear into Junhui's body like he's finding God in the joining.

The Earth turns slowly in the adjustment.

And then, Junhui moves.

They rock together like boats on the ocean, too small for the waves, too big for their bodies. It's hot and slow and Junhui feels like he's being stretched out of his skin and lit on fire. He'd forgotten that sex could be like this. It felt impossible, that he could feel so full and yet like he was being scraped from the inside, bloody and raw.

Junhui leans forward, moans at the angle change. He wraps his hand around Mingyu's throat. Mingyu tips his chin back to accommodate him. It's heady, to feel the oxygen pull through Mingyu's throat, the stuttering of his heart.

Mingyu comes like that, two big hands guiding Junhui's rising and falling waist, Junhui's thumb resting on his pulse, Minghao's ring pressed into his skin. 

Junhui pulls on his own cock, frantic, desperate, standing on the edge of the cliff at the end of the world.

It hurts when he comes. Hurts like the last time he left his mother's house and cried in Minghao's arms. Hurts like pulling out a thorn. Junhui can't tell if it hurts because it isn't Minghao, or if it's because he knows he loves Mingyu even if he shouldn't.

While the sweat cools, Mingyu kisses him sloppy and sweet, candy on his tongue. 

***

A dog meets Minghao in the middle of the trail. The sun is dipping into the west, stretching Minghao's shadow long, glinting off the dog's collar. He's clean and fluffy, sitting straight and proud as his small form will allow. The dog yips when Minghao's shadow touches his paw, wags his tail like he's a friend. 

Around the last bend in the trail, a woman sits on a low ridge pointing a shotgun at Minghao's head with steady hands.

"Dog likes you " she says, voice rough and wrecked. The dog sits on Minghao's foot as if to prove the point.

Minghao gestures with open raised hands, loose, slow, nothing sudden. "I have cough syrup." Steady, no secrets, voice politely open like his palms.

The woman looks at him along the barrel of the gun. The dog whines. A hawk calls in the distance.

"And gummy bears," he adds, lilting, like a question.

"Hm," the woman grunts. "I like you, too." She points the shotgun at the ground. Minghao twists to reach into the bag from the hospital in trade.

The woman takes a shot of cough syrup, chases it with a gummy bear. The dog runs off, barking happily.

"Minghao?" The voice is shaky, but Minghao knows it like he knows the scar on his knee from when he was a lanky teenager who didn't know how to hold his liquor. 

The first thing he notices is how long Mingyu's hair has gotten.

"You need a haircut," Minghao says.

Mingyu is skinnier than he remembers, but then again Minghao is skinnier too. Holding him in his arms is the same, Mingyu curling himself like he wants to be small enough to disappear into Minghao's chest.

He opens his eyes, not realizing he'd closed them, and Junhui is there, real and whole and alive. He looks terrified, shell shocked, skittish like a cat. Minghao lets go of Mingyu, hand trailing unconsciously along Mingyu's chest until he can't touch him anymore. He never takes his eyes away from Junhui. He can't, not if the world cracked in half beneath his feet.

Minghao wants desperately to ask what's wrong, but so much is wrong it seems like a laughably stupid question. 

Junhui holds him so tight he can't breathe, like he could fuse their bones together if he only tried hard enough. Junhui kisses him until they taste the salt of their tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *fingerguns* chapter 3 and the conclusion of our tale coming to your screens next monday! in the meantime, let me know what you thought <3


	3. Chapter 3

_ I try, I do, I try and try. A happy ending? _

_ Sure enough — Hello darling, welcome home. _

_ I’ll call you darling, hold you tight. We are _

_ not traitors but the lights go out. It’s dark. _

_ Sweetheart, is that you? _

\- Richard Siken

  
  


The moment Minghao walks into camp, prodigal son returned from the dead, clear eyed with no craving for human flesh to be found, an hourglass turns over. Mingyu sometimes imagines he can hear the sand.

Minghao is a detective, or was, and Junhui's hands haven't stopped shaking since he looked at Minghao like he was a ghost and kissed him anyway. Minghao's voice makes Junhui jump, like a live wire sparking. Mingyu knows he has tells, too, that he watches too close and makes eye contact too little. 

Minghao doesn't comment on the shared cot, when Mingyu moves his bag out of the tent, setting up his sleeping bag under a small tarp attached to the tent's walls like a parasite that can't bear to be away from its host. He knows Minghao doesn't see it that way, knows Minghao is as grateful, when he crashes to sleep for the night, to be able to hear Mingyu breathing as Mingyu is to hear him. 

Minghao knows something is wrong. Mingyu knows it's only a matter of time before he figures out what.

Jun avoids Mingyu, which only makes sense, even if it does feel like walking around with a knife nestled next to his spine. 

The night Minghao comes home, Mingyu comes off watch, surprised to see Junhui walking toward him. He'd assumed Junhui wouldn't want to be apart from Minghao, after everything, especially since Mark has proven adept with a gun, and he's eager to please. Junhui walks up to him, something unfathomable in his eyes glinting in the fire light. Mingyu can't think of a single thing to do or say, so he just hands him the shotgun. Junhui takes it, and then he takes a fistful of Mingyu's hair and kisses him hard on the mouth. It tastes like goodbye.

It doesn't get easier for Mingyu, no matter how hard he tries to make himself go back to feeling like he did before, like a courtly love was enough, paladin to his kings. But longing for something mythical and huge was one thing. Longing for something you've held between your palms is something else entirely. 

He wakes up when Junhui does, early every morning, still, like there's a ghost haunting Junhui even now, with his husband in his bed. Mingyu stares at the wall of the tent like maybe he could count the rise and fall of Minghao's chest if he tries hard enough.

They're all in the little supplies cabin, going through the things Minghao managed to forage from the wreckage of Seoul, laughing together at something. It's still forced, something taut in the air, but there's the certainty of normalcy in it. In a thoughtless, exhausted moment, Junhui leans over Mingyu to look at something and tangles his hand in the hair at Mingyu's nape, and Mingyu tips his head into Junhui's palm.

Minghao drops a jar of peaches, shattered glass and sticky sweet syrup everywhere.

The sand in the hourglass runs out.

***

Junhui stares at the wood grain of the tabletop. There are mountains and valleys of gouges and worn places, smooth and splinter free from so many hands having oiled it over the years. It looks like it's shaking, but it's Junhui that's shaking, fine tremors wracking him completely out of his control. He feels like he's outside of his own body, head disconnected, like a balloon, like he'll float away. He can't stop staring at the wood grain of the tabletop.

Minghao is screaming. It's the first time Minghao has ever raised his voice at him in anger. He's screaming at Mingyu, too.

_ "How could you?" _ His voice is like stones, like Junhui is tied to this chair to be pelted with them. There are no ropes or chains but his shame. _ "You're my best friend!" _

_ "We thought you were dead," _ Mingyu screams back, pleading behind the anger, fear behind the volume. He's standing next to Junhui. He's reaching a hand out to Minghao, the other clenched tight on the back of Junhui's chair. _ I should be doing that, _ Junhui thinks, about the reaching. He can't move. His world is falling apart around his ears, _ again, _ and worse this time, worse because he did this, because _ he _ is the demonic creature eating Minghao's heart. 

_ "Fucking SAY SOMETHING," _ Minghao screams at him.

He can't move. Silent tears spill like rivers down his face, blurring the wood grain on the tabletop.

***

Minghao tears out of the little cabin, glass crunching beneath his boots. He doesn't know where he's going, doesn't care, he just can't look at them anymore. Can't look at Mingyu, reaching out like he's going to fix it with his hands. Can't look at Junhui. He wants to break Junhui in half. He wants to wipe the tears off Junhui's face. He wants him to tell him why.

Not why did Junhui do it. He doesn't have to ask Junhui if he loves Mingyu. He knows. No, he wants Junhui to tell him why Minghao fought so hard to find his way back to a husband that wasn't his anymore. To a best friend that betrayed him so completely it leaves him breathless and feral with rage and hurt.

Minghao finds himself at the bank of the little river. He shakes with the desire to throw a boulder into it, to tear the cliff behind it down with his bare hands until the meadow the camp is resting on floods. He breathes like his Wushu shifu taught him to. 

The light is low, the golden spray of sunset ending, stars becoming visible to the east. Minghao watches a leaf flow down the river over boulders, tumbling over and over in the water. He thinks about following it back down the mountain, back through the northwestern part of the city, back to the sea. He thinks about finding a boat and sailing it somewhere he’s never been before. 

Mingyu will keep Junhui safe. Junhui will keep Mingyu happy. They’ll both take care of the camp and the odd little tribe they’ve all become while Minghao was sleeping. Minghao has no desire to be an unwelcome houseguest in his own husband’s arms. He toys with the ring on his finger, spinning it in the cool twilight air.

A twig snaps behind him. Minghao draws his gun and turns in one fluid movement, safety snapped off and finger on the trigger, ready to fire. Junhui is standing in the crosshairs, ten feet from the barrel of the gun.

Minghao doesn’t lower the weapon. 

Junhui doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink. He stands there, trembling, the very last of the sunlight dying on the pale spun gold of his hair. Tear tracks remain on his face, like he’s wearing them as badges, like scars. Minghao looks at his face and knows that Junhui would follow him to the sea, would swim behind the boat if Minghao tried to sail away, would swim until he caught up or drowned. Junhui looks back at him over the hard cold metal of the gun like he’d let Minghao shoot him, if that’s what Minghao wanted as penance.

Minghao puts down the gun.

***

Mingyu picks up shards of glass from the supply cabin floor, puts the remnants of the jar in a cardboard box carefully, unsure how they’ll use it, only knowing that there’s no room for waste, everything precious, everything necessary. The last tiny piece slices his finger and he hisses in pain, sticks his finger in his mouth to soothe it thoughtlessly. Beneath the blood is a hint of sweetness, syrup tacky on his fingers, congealing on the floor. Sucking the blood and juice from the wound, he feels the last wrongness of the wound on his lip from when Junhui bit him, that first night, that first kiss. 

The peaches he puts, one by one, into an empty cleaned out aluminum can. He uses a jug of boiled river water to rinse the fruit, pops one into his mouth to feel the flesh give, the burst of sweetness washing away the lingering blood in his mouth. It slides down his throat and lands in his belly, nestled along with the twin stones of Minghao’s words, and Junhui’s face when he rose on shaking legs and followed Minghao without looking back.

Mingyu pours a second jug with unboiled river water over the floor to dilute the stickiness. The cabin is old and wasn’t built to any kind of construction code, the water flows in a quick and steady stream across the sloping floor, carrying the evidence out the open door.

Footsteps in the near distance have Mingyu looking up. Minghao and Junhui walk back toward their tent, slow steps out of sync, too much space between Junhui’s hunched shoulders and Minghao’s. Junhui is looking at the ground. Minghao’s head is turned toward him, just so. Mingyu was a detective, not so long ago. He can read the language two bodies speak.

Mingyu knows he should take the first night watch, knows at the very least he should sit with Renjun and JoJo, let the dog lean against his leg, let the fire crackle, let Renjun’s silence wash away the certainty that’s settled into his bones. Mingyu waits for the stream of water rolling out the cabin door to become drips, to become still. And then he walks to his sleeping bag underneath his parasite tarp attached to Minghao and Junhui’s tent.

There are quiet murmurs from the other side of the canvas wall. Mingyu doesn’t try to interpret them as he goes through the motions of preparing for bed. He understands only enough Mandarin to recognize it, to know the words aren’t for him. 

Mingyu is feigning sleep for an audience of zero when the sounds become unmistakably sexual. Minghao’s voice goes from hard to commanding, still no yielding in it, but it’s inclusive. Not _ Fuck you, _ but _ Do as I say because you are mine. _ Junhui is breathless, needy, pleading. Junhui sounds nothing like he did straddling Mingyu’s hips, fucking himself on his own fingers.

Mingyu can’t help the way his cock twitches, is too tired to be ashamed of it. He lays on his back, staring at his makeshift ceiling and listens, imagining Minghao kissing Junhui, imagining Junhui on his back for him, legs spread, welcoming him home. Mingyu pictures the way Junhui must arch his back when Minghao slides into him, long drawn out moan pushed out of his throat.

Minghao has always been the type to claim what was his, for as long as Mingyu has known him. His sexuality was always an open secret, only barely discreet enough to get by in his professional life, helped by his give-no-fucks competence at his job. Minghao’s love for Junhui was never a secret at all. Mingyu remembers the one time a supervisor brought them both into his office and told Minghao he shouldn’t wear a ring on his left ring finger, as it makes it appear as though he is married when he isn’t. The supervisor probably thought Mingyu would influence him in some way, shame him maybe, an audience Minghao would respond to. Mingyu leaned back in his seat. Minghao said, “There is no law that a man may only wear a ring on that finger if he is engaged in a state-recognized marriage, sir. I would think you would know that.”

Minghao fucks Junhui like that. The steady controlled brutality of his hips obvious in the sounds of flesh colliding. Junhui’s moans and pleas and babbling ratchets louder and louder and Minghao never once tells him to hush. The entire camp must hear it, must know Minghao is staking his claim, handprint bruises on Junhui’s hips, cock inside him like he can erase Mingyu’s come with it. The entire camp may not know that Junhui is staking his claim, too, volume an apology, a penance, a renewal of vows.

Mingyu pulls on his own cock beneath the covers to the rhythm of Minghao’s thrusts, only spit for lube because he wants it to hurt and chafe. He wants to feel it in the morning, sensitive skin just a little bit raw. If this was another world, one where the dead never came back as monsters, where this was a porn video instead of the two most important people in his life, Mingyu would have a vibrating dildo in his ass because he can’t decide what he wants more; to be flat on his back under the onslaught of Minghao’s brutal efficiency, or burying himself between Junhui’s warm and open thighs.

_ “Please, Jun, I, I need,” _ Minghao stutters, command gone, vulnerable at last.

_ “I love you,” _ Junhui gasps. He says it in three languages, English ‘you’ lost in his shout as he comes.

Mingyu and Minghao come in eerie sync, a one way connection. Minghao, Mingyu imagines, spills in a welcome body, arms there to catch him as he falls. Mingyu spills, silent and messy, over his own fist. He has nothing to clean up with, so he wipes his hand on the inside of his boxers and leaves the sticky uncomfortable wreck of come to harden, painfully congealed in his pubic hair.

Mingyu lies awake, curled onto his side, keeping watch over the wall of the tent. Only when Junhui rises before the first light of dawn does Mingyu finally sleep.

***

Things don’t magically become okay after Minghao fucks him. Junhui lets him in, Junhui gives him all he has because it’s the least he can do for his husband who he still loves, just as much as when he promised in front of all their friends to have and to hold until death do they part. Junhui could make an argument that he thought death _ had _ parted them, but he doesn’t. It’s too important for that. And it feels less and less like the truth anyway.

Junhui’s dreams change. Now it’s Mingyu’s hands on his skin. Now it’s Mingyu’s mouth hovering over his cock just before he wakes up.

Junhui avoids Mingyu, which means things don’t magically become okay between them, either. There’s no reddit anymore, so it’s not like he can go onto r/relationships and be like “I [30M] fucked my husband’s [28M] best friend [29M] because I thought my husband was dead. Surprise, he isn’t. Now what do I do?”

Minghao works with Mingyu on things around the camp. They don’t laugh or joke or smile at each other the way they used to, but they’ve known each other so long it’s easy to see it in the way they move, the way they hand each other things without needing to ask. It’s stiff, still, tension in both of their shoulders. It looks painful, like a broken bone that wasn’t set quite right.

Before any of them have a chance to even truly understand what happened between them, the old military vet dies in the night. She never told anyone her name, just said to call her Auntie, because everyone who knew her old name was dead and gone and she didn’t want anyone to call their restless spirits.

They find out the virus isn’t only transmitted through a bite from the infected undead when Auntie’s body rises up from her cot, hungry for flesh.

Chaos erupts through the camp, snarling animal sounds interspersed with screams. Junhui sits upright, hand on Minghao, heart bursting out of his chest. He doesn’t know it’s Auntie yet, doesn’t know what’s happening, only knows they’re under attack and that must mean they got through the watch.

“Mingyu,” Minghao gasps before Junhui can put voice to his terror.

They’re both out of the tent faster than possible, guns in their hands, no shoes on their feet. 

Auntie barrels into Junhui, blindsiding him, knocking him into Minghao, both of them on the ground. Junhui loses the gun. Junhui has enough time to look up at Auntie’s lifeless eyes, her bloody-toothed animal baring of teeth. He has enough time to be absurdly grateful he’s on top of Minghao, that Minghao might have a chance to escape with his life.

Mingyu comes out of nowhere, smashing Auntie in the face with the butt of the shotgun, too close quarters to fire it. Junhui will wonder, later, how much of the abilities of their host the virus retains, because Auntie takes the blow and turns on military trained feet. She grabs the shotgun and uses it to pull Mingyu off his feet. He falls in an awkward heap, no weapons, nowhere to go, bleeding from somewhere but Junhui can’t tell where.

Junhui screams.

Minghao reaches around Junhui’s shoulder to fire his gun and Auntie’s head explodes in a spray of blood and bone and gore.

***

It’s quiet in the storage cabin. Everyone else is busy rebuilding the tents, burning the body, washing themselves and their clothes in the river. Mingyu refused to be looked after until he knew everyone else was safe. Minghao hates him for every drop of blood he dotted along the pathways through the camp. Minghao hates him for the slow motion eternity he spent thinking he’d have to watch his best friend die.

Minghao leans against the doorway, casual-seeming sentinel. He watches Junhui pull down armfuls of supplies, more than he needs, mind in too many places at once for efficiency. Junhui’s hands are shaking when he sits in front of Mingyu and cups his torn and bleeding palm in his. He splashes vodka on the gash and stutters putting it down like he wanted to take a drink but didn’t. Surprisingly neat X’s bloom across Mingyu’s skin, stitches closing the wound and marking a future roadmap of scars, X for death, X for kiss. Gauze covers them like a blanket, the hush of the fabric shield a tender caress.

The air smells like blood and honey. Minghao takes a deep breath. 

"I love you, you know. I always have." Minghao drops it into the room like a boulder onto the shore. It doesn't cause a ripple so much as a splash. It doesn't stop the waves, only changes their direction. Oxygen sucks back into the room like the swirling eddies of receding surf.

He's looking at Mingyu. Mingyu is looking back.

Junhui looks between them, hands still on the clean white gauze, still for the first time since Minghao found his way home.

"Me, too," Mingyu croaks, clears his throat. His eyes are wide and intense and wet. "Always, Hao. Me, too."

A blue bird sings carefully outside the open window. Danger or safety. Which is it, which is it.

"You can kiss him." Minghao slides his gaze to Junhui. His eyes are sharp, eyebrows raised. It feels good to have him in the room again, like a string tied to his breastbone finally pulled taut. "It's okay, Jun. It's okay."

***

Junhui's fingertips are sticky with honey when he puts his hand on Mingyu's cheek. This is the first kiss that feels like a meeting between them, 50/50 split, kissing and being kissed. This is a hello kiss, an 'I missed you' kiss, settling together like pebbles at the bottom of a lake. It feels like a beginning Mingyu never dared to ask for.

Minghao stands behind him, his footsteps like shockwaves in Mingyu's belly, some part of him always aware of where he is, now, he and Junhui twin stars he orbits around in the dark. Junhui pulls away. Minghao cups Mingyu's throat, his jaw, uses his hold to tilt Mingyu's head back, his palm hot, and owning.

Minghao kisses him like that, upside down and bent backwards, trapped by his hand and his lips. He uses his teeth, and then his tongue to soothe. Mingyu feels drunk with it, pliant in the face of Minghao's control. He feels things he will never voice; like a dog whose being brought into a pack, showing his belly to the alpha, whining with happiness at pleasing him. He wants the cold metal of Minghao's ring to brand him, right over the junction where throat meets jaw. He wants to tattoo Junhui's handprint over his heart.

He can't stop the pitiful sound he makes when Minghao ends the kiss. Mingyu surprises himself by taking Minghao by the wrist and sucking two elegant fingers into his mouth. He laps his tongue between Minghao's ring and pinky fingers, wraps his lips over the wedding ring and pulls slowly back until his hand is freed with a pop.

Junhui moans. Minghao looks down at him, unreadable like this, eyes dark.

They trade places, both of their hands on Mingyu the entire time, Junhui stealing a kiss. The sound of Minghao's belt buckle opening makes Mingyu's heart skip a beat.

"Come on, baby," Minghao murmurs, cock jutting proudly from the V of his legs. His hand is gentle on Mingyu's nape.

The first taste is salt sweat and bitterness, musk heavy without scented soaps or colognes to mask it. Mingyu wants to drown in it. He closes his eyes and worships Minghao's cock, jaw an open temple, tongue and lips speaking prayer to his flesh. Junhui's hands spread over his chest, Minghao's firm and present in his hair. Mingyu can hear the wetness of kisses over his head and that is almost as powerful as the weight in his mouth.

Minghao tugs hard in warning before he spills and Mingyu swallows it down like a salve for internal bleeding, for wounds sunlight will never see.

Junhui slips his tongue into his mouth and licks up the remnants, groaning deeply. Minghao steals back his husband's lips, three points connected, mouth to mouth to mouth.

They go back to the tent after that, Mingyu and Junhui hard and uncomfortable in their jeans, in their eagerness, Junhui holding Mingyu's wrist, Minghao with his arm around Junhui's neck. They all three stop in the doorway, staring at the single tiny cot before they laugh, sharing a glance. Minghao goes out, grabs Mingyu's sleeping bag, Junhui tosses the cot mattress to the ground. Minghao comes back in and lays the sleeping bag out next to it, spreads his hands and smiles like he's presenting them with a gift. Mingyu kisses him for it. Mingyu has to kiss him for it.

Minghao spins him gently, hooks his chin over Mingyu's shoulder, wraps his arms around his chest. Junhui presses himself to Mingyu, sensual body roll, hands on his hips, cock hard through their jeans, mouth the last place to land. Minghao holds him through the delicious barrage.

Clothes come off in flurries, fits and starts interrupted by hands and lips on freshly exposed skin. The sunlight through the canvas makes everything a golden dream, emotional whiplash from the bloody chaos of the night. It's easy to forget, when Mingyu is enveloped by warmth, and skin, and life, and love. Dripping, heady love.

On his back on the little cot mattress Junhui's fingers pressing into him, with Minghao murmuring in Junhui's ear, "One more, sweetheart, look at our baby, he's ready for another," Mingyu keens like the sound is being pulled out of him on a string.

He wraps his legs around Junhui's hips and pulls him in and in and in while Minghao lays on the makeshift bed beside him and splays a hand over Mingyu's belly just above his cock, like he can feel Junhui filling him from the outside.

"Honey," Junhui says, "oh honey, come for me."

Mingyu does. The world goes white, the only thing tethering him to Earth, the only thing keeping him from floating away in ecstasy, is Junhui sharing his body, Minghao holding him down.

***

The three of them decide to pack a picnic and hike out to a spot Minghao remembers, a wide flat granite cliff with sprawling, endless views. Things have been quiet and calm since the disaster with Auntie, the Dreamies adept enough to hold down the fort if anything happened without them. Renjun rolled his eyes when Junhui asked, waved him off and said, blunt as anything, "Please go fuck your husbands somewhere I don't have to hear you, I don't even have music to drown you out with anymore for fuck's sake." Junhui laughed until his stomach muscles hurt.

The view is as beautiful as Minghao promised, the food simple but a full belly still just as comforting as it ever was. Mingyu is curled around Junhui to his left, tracing idle patterns on Junhui's thigh, the dog snuggled up behind his knees. Minghao is up on his elbows looking across the valley below them, face relaxed and breathing easy.

They'll have to go back into the city soon, try to find more food, supplies to build true shelters for the coming winter, seeds to sow for the growing season, maybe books about how the fuck to grow them.

But for now, the sunset paints the sky in a riot of color, with nothing that needs to be done except to appreciate it, and the beautiful men at his side. 

The sky grows slowly but steadily dark. In the dying of the light, Junhui closes his eyes. For the first time since the end of the world, he sleeps, dreamless and deep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic took over my life and became something bigger and more emotionally intense than I think I ever imagined I could write. if you made it here, thank you for taking this journey with me.


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